How much does a Twitch streamer make? March and April 2015

Well, let’s have a look. It’s been 2 months since I posted one of these because things got hectic around the end of March and early April. I got the offer to be on the analyst desk at the World Championship Series for StarCraft 2 near the end of March. Since I barely watched any WCS that season and it was such short notice I had a lot I needed to do. Lots and lots of preparation in watching as many vods of the players as possible in the 5 days that I had and sorting out everything I needed to fly to France. There is no way I could turn down this offer to continue streaming, I was outrageously excited when I received it and instantly accepted.

It hindered my stream massively, though at possibly the worst time ever. I have don’t have the perfect memory of everything that happened in March since it was a while ago now but close to the end of March my stream was growing at a stupendous rate due to Winter (another SC2 streamer) drama. Winter got found out for viewbotting, a bunch of things happened to Winter that meant he was getting less viewers in turn meaning that they were sprinkling down to smaller streamers like myself. People were posting on Reddit etc about my stream in light of the events which gave me incredible amounts of exposure. I think my stream skyrocketed from 100-200 average viewers to 500-1000 average viewers nearing the end of March. Preparing for WCS and going to France stopped that momentum in it’s tracks, I think. Also on top of that Legacy of the Void beta came out when I was travelling. I originally planned to stream LOTV 12 hours a day for the first week from release which combined with the momentum I had at the time I think would’ve been huge.

But alas, I could never turn down that offer. The experience of going to France was amazing!

Without looking at the numbers, April was rough. I got back from France to my real home on the 10th or something, completely exhausted from working non-stop at the event and travelling non-stop for 40 hours after the event after getting no sleep (my mistake, got a lil drunk) Had the biggest problems fixing my sleeping pattern and streaming consistently for almost 2 weeks. I never realized I was so bad at dealing with travel until this trip. So until late April I streamed very inconsistently at abnormal hours, I still streamed a decent amount I think – it just felt so unorganized and was hitting a completely different audience than I normally do (Euros vs Americans). Late April I got my shit together and finally managed to fix my sleeping pattern with the help of sleeping pills and exercise, now going into May my stream is more consistent than ever; but more about that next month. Due to terrible streaming hours, inconsistency, not streaming for almost the first 2 weeks of April etc. my viewer and sub count was down in comparison to the great month I had in March. Momentum and consistency are powerful.

Income (March)

Here’s what everyone really wants to see, I guess. Most of these numbers are estimates, because sites tend to calculate pay outs months later but they should be close to accurate. All currency is in USD.

Tips: $1280

Twitch Subs: $400

Twitch Ad Revenue: $73.30 (Not running ads anymore, this is just from pre-rolls)

YouTube Ad Revenue: $20

Total: ~$1761 (9.15% decrease in comparison to February)

Income (April)

Note that I’m not including anything I might have made from WCS here, as I haven’t asked them if it’s alright to share and I just assume it isn’t.

Tips: $556

Twitch Subs: $387.5

Twitch Ad Revenue: $39.30 (Not running ads anymore, this is just from pre-rolls)

YouTube Ad Revenue: $15

Total: ~$998 (55.3% decrease in comparison to March)

Numbers/Growth (March)

Here are the view numbers, followers etc. for Twitch and other social media.

Twitch Subs: 160, +63 in March

Twitch Followers: 7837, +1653 in March

Twitch Avg Concurrents: 250~ but going up to 400-500 near the end of March, huge increase!

Analysis

These 2 months were messy. April was definitely very very messy and obviously looking at the statistics it was an awful month for me. With that said, I’m honestly not too worried even though the statistics are bad if you take into account the WCS situation it all makes sense. The only thing is, next time I get an offer for an event like that which will take up a lot of time I’ll have to think about it more otherwise it may end up being the death of my goal to be a streamer. March was consistent except for a bunch of days near the end where I was getting ready for WCS. May will be the interesting month, since I’m back being extremely consistent again now.

Slacked with YouTube as pretty much always. However, I experimented with different style of content which gives me more freedom and creativity with editing and I’ve been enjoying it a lot more. I think if I only look to upload 1 video per day I can keep up with it in May. I really need to get this down, having a presence on YouTube is huge – Easy to share content for social media, massive user base on YouTube. My content style for YouTube nowadays is going be more highlight based integrated with whatever fun/creativity i come up while editing, It’s been good so far with the small amount i made!

Stream quality is something im turning myself toward more and more. One of my goals right now is to keep improving the quality of my stream, sometime in March I got a new expensive audio setup which sounds quite delightful. Also a new lighting setup and greenscreen which makes everything look really clean. My video quality is great too, after I updated my PC back in February. One thing I’ve done recently is to stop running ads and also remove sub and donation alerts, I think all of them detract from the quality of the stream. However that does come at a trade of as people are less likely to donate without it, pop ups remind people to donate and also give them a little thrill so it’s something I may bring back at some point if I can figure out a less invasive way to do it (I like how manvsgame does this, he has a setup where popups don’t show until he presses a button, meaning that he can keep them hidden during important gameplay parts and just show them during gameplay downtime.) I’m satisfied with my layout/overlay however have seen a streamer with what I consider a slightly better looking setup so I’ll be working towards that this month, it includes graphic animations so it’s a bit harder to setup. Anything I could do to upgrade the video/audio quality right would be extremely minimal for the amount it would cost and probably not worth it (2nd pc for streaming, more expensive compressor, audio FX.) Which leaves increasing the quality of commentary, so I’ll be criticising myself on that in May if I can. I think as long as I keep improving the quality then people will be more likely to watch and be long term viewers, it may not be the best for making monies by spamming alerts all over the place but I believe it will be better in the long run by providing a more consistently high value stream with a focus on gameplay.

I am LOVING my current schedule I think it’s almost perfect. Could possibly be better for streaming if I started a couple of hours earlier but I enjoy starting at 8am as it allows me to be on a normal time for Australia. 7 hours seems like a great length, don’t get exhausted and it gives me a decent amount of time to be healthy, create YouTube content and have some free time… Or slack on making YouTube content and just stream more ;).

Consistency is key, I do believe if I was consistent with streaming around the time I had that great momentum my stream would be in a far better position than it is right now.

Not too much to say really, I’m quite happy lately. I’ll see you fellas next month for the next instalment of this little blog.

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About Fenn3r

I'm a professional streamer and content creator for Twitch.tv and YouTube. I'm currently in love with Overwatch. Therefore, Overwatch will be my main focus both during my livestreams, and the main feature of my YouTube channel.

My stream offers a relaxed, down-to-earth atmosphere where you can hang out and chill, watch gameplay, and join in on meaningful, friendly and fun discussions. I'd be happy to have you join me over at twitch.tv/fenn3r for some live Overwatch action!